IRON MAN

Superhero
origin stories are usually a drag. After all, do we really want to see how Peter
Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider or how the
Fantastic Four gets bombarded with gamma rays whilst adrift in space?

Not really. Audiences just
want to get to the good stuff straight away —
Fantastic Four’s The Thing clobbering Dr. Doom —
without any dull exposition.

Too much exposition and too
little action pay-off threaten to derail Iron Man, but the origin story
is so intrinsic to the character and the plot that there is no way getting
around it. After all, then Iron Man would just be some guy in a robot suit.
Instead he is Tony Stark, billionaire playboy owner of Stark Industries, one of
the U.S.’s biggest military weapons producers. Stark (Robert Downey, Jr. in an
energetic performance) is kidnapped by some terrorists after demonstrating some
of Stark Industry’s latest military technology to top brass in Afghanistan.

Ah, how the sands of global
politics have shifted. In the Reagan years Afghan militia were the heroes in
movies such as Rambo III. Here they are the villains. (In the original
1960s Marvel comic books Stark was captured by the Vietcong.) The Afghan villains here are however
depoliticized. They seem to have no
radical Islamic political agenda and are merely generic bad guys. All they
want is power for the sake of it. What they are going to do once they get to power is
a bit of a mystery. Thus there is no America being the “Great Satan” speeches by
the head villain. Just a lot of vague grousing about becoming the next Genghis
Khan stuff —
nothing to overtly alienate potential Muslim audiences.

The Mujadin, er sorry, Afghan
bad guys force the captive Stark into building a new high-tech missile system
for them. How they realistically expected him to build a piece of leading-edge
technology for them in a cave using a blast furnace is a bit of mystery. One can
see that it is all written by the same screenplay writers who expect audiences
to buy what happens next: instead of building the missile for them, Stark builds
an super-powered iron bodysuit right under their noses. The bodysuit is bulletproof, can fly and boasts a flamethrower too. Pretty impressive for what seems
to be a few days’ work!

"What makes Iron Man work is an electrifying performance
by Robert Downey, Jr . . ."

Stark uses the suit to escape
and eventually winds up back in the States where he announces in a
informal press conference that Stark Industries will be quitting the lucrative
weapons manufacture business; something which he decided upon after realizing
that the Afghan baddies have been supplied with Stark weapons, probably
by someone within the company itself. That “someone” turns out to be his
second-in-command, Obadiah Stane (played by a bald Jeff Bridges). It seems that Bridges’ cigar-chomping power-suited baldy is
(surprise! surprise!) the villain all along and has actually ordered a hit on Stark so that he can take
control of the company. Stane also discovers what Tony Stark has
been up to since he returned from captivity in Afghanistan, namely secretly
building a more advanced prototype of the metal suit he used to escape.
Naturally Stane builds an even bigger metal robot (named Iron Monger, but never
called that in the movie) with which Iron Man faces off during the film’s
climax.

There is a noticeable dip in
the action once Stark returns to the States and starts building his second robot
suit, especially since we have already sat through some scenes of him having
built the first suit. However Downey Jr.’s charismatic performance, some
unexpected humor and exceptional special effects pull the movie through these
scenes so that we can get to the mano-a-mano super-powered robots battle towards the end. These scenes are well-done, but pales
somewhat to the fight scenes in last year’s Transformers.

But
CGI robot fight scenes aren’t what Iron Man is about. What makes the
movie work (and it does work despite its mistakes) is an electrifying
performance by Robert Downey, Jr., clever and witty dialogue plus some neat
special effects and some nice humorous touches. Ideally one should hate the cocky and
obnoxious Stark, especially during the movie’s early scenes in which one is
confronted by his envy-inducing playboy lifestyle. We are supposed to hate
sleazy weapons manufacturers, right? Yet Downey, Jr. actually makes us like
Stark. This is Downey’s movie and he carries it through with aplomb. The
supporting cast (also including Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow as loyal
sidekicks) do okay, but actually have very little to do. This is Downey’s show,
and the other actors seem to realise this and never try to steal the movie
from him.

The first real blockbuster of
2008, Iron Man is fluff. But it is hugely entertaining fluff. Less of a
butt-numbing experience than Spider-man 3, but
more substantial than Fantastic Four – Rise of
the Silver Surfer, Iron Man clocks in at 126 minutes. Despite that small dip in
the action, the running time is just about right. Audiences looking for grand
escapist fare at cinemas this summer won’t mind having spent their price of
admission on it. Be sure to get some popcorn too . . .

Some notes:

The film’s politics are
astoundingly naïve in the way it ignores the realities of the global weapons
business. For a more realistic view, check out Lord of War starring
Nicolas Cage. In a way it is a mistake getting Iron Man involved in “everyday”
stuff such as fixing global wrongs. Does this mean that he is going to solve
all of our wars for us? Should he have been called Globocop instead? Iron Man should
ideally be battling supervillains and evil masterminds.

In a way Iron Man is
the ultimate wish-fulfillment role model for picked-upon adolescents. After
all, who wouldn’t want to be a super-rich billionaire, have chicks all over
them and use their money to become a real-life superhero and kick people’s
asses?

Famously in the comics Stark
fought a battle with alcoholism. In this movie he chugs down a lot of booze in
his “pre-hero” phase, but seems to sober up as soon as he becomes Iron Man.

Iron Man flies from his home
in L.A. to a remote village in Afghanistan. Question: how long did this
intercontinental flight take him and for how many pee breaks did he have to
land? Or is it something he does in his suit like an astronaut?

The movie ends somewhat
abruptly and will probably have audiences wanting more . . .